The 3 Cheapest Ways To Make Good Coffee At Home
Did you know that getting a coffee on your way to work every day could cost $1000 per year?
It’s a crazy amount of money for the sake of a daily frappa-cappa-cuppa-coffee. Especially when instead you could get yourself a coffee maker at home and a thermos and you’ll be making great coffee at home in no time. Not to mention that you could even make yourself a cup of joe at work.
Now there are dozens of different ways you can make coffee at home, some are arguably more expensive than going out for coffee if you decided to get yourself a top of the line espresso maker and the fanciest coffee grinder you can find.
But it doesn’t need to be so, making great coffee at home can cost you less than $100 plus $5 a week for great coffee.
It comes down to how hard you want to try for your coffee and if you want to be a bit more hands on or not.
Because a drip machine makes good coffee with maximum convenience and minimum clean up. But a French press will make you great coffee with a little extra effort and more clean up after.
It depends what you’re into.
The Coffee Machines
French Press
I love using my french press, it takes a little bit of skill to get right and you need to commit to buying a scale alongside it for about $50 total.
French Presses give you a delicious cup of coffee, it’s one of the best ways to make coffee and allows you to get the most flavor out of the coffee beans.
BUT it’s easy to do wrong, you can really easily miss-use a french press and get a bad cup of coffee.
That’s why if you buy a french press you also need to buy a scale to weigh out exactly how much coffee you need and how much water you add.
And you can use a timer on your phone to brew it for exactly the right length of time.
My optimum one cup of coffee is 16 grams of ground coffee, brewed in 240ml of water for 5 minutes, then gently plunged and poured out.
After that you need to take it apart and give it all a clean under the running tap but once you’re used to it should only take about 30 seconds.
This method gets you the best tasting coffee for cheap at home, you can get a grinder for a next level coffee experience but you don’t need one you can buy pre-ground coffee for a French press/cafetiere.
You can even use a French press to foam milk to make faux-cappuccinos.
Drip Coffee Machines
Does the French press sound like too much hassle? Absolutely fair, you can still get a very decent cup of coffee out of a drip machine, it won’t taste quite as good as a well made French press but is still tasty and so convenient because you don’t need to weigh it and clean up is easy because you can bin the filter afterward.
I use my drip machine all the time when we have people over for coffee, can set it up and forget it, and have 4-6 cups of delicious coffee ready to go.
A decent filter machine will be about $50-100 but an excellent one is $300, not at all necessary but if you love your coffee the higher spend could be a good idea.
And when you’re going to save $1000 a year you can easily treat yourself for a higher end machine and come out at a profit. Even allowing for occasional coffee as a social event rather than a caffeine fix.
Aeropress
I’d almost forgotten about the Aeropress until the site co-owner Scott reminded me! But how could I? The aeropress is cheap, around $30, you can take it to work and it makes good coffee in a couple of minutes.
It’s a bit strange figuring out how to work it out but it’s definitely not complicated and once you’ve got it you have delicious coffee.
It’s smoother because it goes through the paper filter and is actually less acidic which makes it easier to digest if you’ve got a more sensitive stomach.
Definitely the most hipster choice but I can’t deny that it makes great coffee.
Now you just need to get some good coffee beans.
The Coffee
Yes, you can buy ground coffee cheap at the grocery store, and yes it is gross a lot of the time. I kid, there are a lot of really nice coffee’s you can buy really easily but when you’re saving so much money not going out for coffee you can raise the bar a little and get some freshly roasted coffee.
Local Roasters
This is my favorite place to get coffee. Independent coffee roasters are everywhere, it’s just a case of googling “your city + coffee roasters” and you’ll be surprised how many results come up.
Local roasters make great coffee (generally speaking) and it costs more than the grocery store but it’s like chalk and cheese when it comes to quality.
And since you’re saving money you don’t need to go full cheap and force yourself through terrible coffee to save money, it’s still a fraction of the cost of having coffee out every day.
If you don’t have a local roaster then there are more and more online coffee delivery services that allow you to have fresh coffee delivered straight to your door.
Even at $100 for a drip machine and $5 a week for coffee you’re still only at $350 a year for your coffee and then $250 a year after that, I’d say that’s not bad going at all.
But be warned, it can become an obsessive hobby all too easily!
